December 31 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On his recollection of the Miracle on Manchester:
I don’t remember – what year was that? [Reporter: ‘82.] [Reporter: Daryl?] No, I remember seeing highlights of Daryl doing it, but in terms of what year, I couldn’t tell ya.

On what Derek Forbort has done to get shots through:
When they’re on, our defense gets a lot of shots. They’re open up top and pretty mobile guys.

On whether the Kings would consider going away form Morning skates like some teams:
Their schedule allows it. I would say when you get into some, I would say some schedules allow it. I would say in the East it’s probably easier. We don’t practice very often, so our guys like going out there for a few minutes. It’s got nothing to do with morning skates. It’s got to do with what you did the day before, what time you got in, all those things. Some teams are at their practice rinks, some teams are at their big buildings. There’s way more into it than saying, ‘we’re not having morning skates.’ There’s a lot of value to it as far as teaching and stuff?] I think each guy is different. I think if you look at our last – for sure, since the first of the month – we’ve had very few practices. It’s just the way our schedules have been, so the day of the game, maybe you can just do two or three things that reinforce things. [Reporter: You don’t ever see it going away completely?] No, it wouldn’t be allowed, first off. You guys wouldn’t allow it, because then the players wouldn’t be at the rink, and I’m sure the league doesn’t [intend to get rid of morning skates]. I’ve talked about it on this trip. There never used to be morning skates. Really, morning skates came into being when, first off, there was no practice buildings. For example, if you were in Chicago where it’s a long ways to go from the suburbs to sit in traffic for an hour, and then come home an hour, then go back an hour, then come home, it’s a long ways. So basically morning skates started when the league got a little bit younger and when guys liked to go out there in their tracksuits. It’s true. The schedule was lighter, you only played three days a week, things like that, so it’s changed a lot. Again, when you say ‘some teams,’ their schedules allow it. Some teams’ schedules don’t allow it. We didn’t skate yesterday, so our guys wanted to skate today. I give them that, always.

On younger players such as Kevin Labanc and Timo Meier having an impact for San Jose:
It’s no different than young players on our team. Call up guys, you want ‘em to make an impression. Same thing that we do.

On whether the lack of scoring comes from not getting enough chances or not capitalizing:
I’m more interested in cutting scoring chances down and giving up easy goals against. Scoring goes once in a while you don’t and once in a while you do. We’ve seen it, we’ve already done it several times this season. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘I can’t score.’ And then when they do, then well, here. One of the highest scoring teams in the league .Hey, it happens. That’s the way it goes. But easy goals against have hurt us since Christmas.

On what needs to be improved from the previous meetings with San Jose.
Well, the first game we played in there it was two-one. We turned the puck over in the third period on the wall, and they scored to make it two-one. So it’s two-one. You can look at it and say it’s a pretty good game, and then the last game here, they scored a couple of goals in a short period of time in the first period. I’m not anything other than trying to get the most out of our top guys, and they run pretty deep. Hey, they run pretty deep. They’re the best team in our division, that’s clear. There’s three teams that have won twice as many as they’ve lost in the conference, and there’s a pile of teams that are .500 to a handful over, so you know what? We’ve got our work cut out. They’re a top team.

On whether it’s “typical” that a young player like Tanner Pearson struggles with consistency:
I don’t think he’s struggled with consistency. If you’re just doing it on numbers, point-wise, then you’d say that. But if you look at it in terms of scoring chance, time spent with puck, O-zone possession, all those things, the situations you put him in, he’s been pretty good.

- No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.

- Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other commenters, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.

- Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.